Soon Lirazel steals back to Elfland, Alveric embarks on a quest to find her and Orion is left behind to grow up as best he can. Alveric and Lirazel marry, have a son and rule Erl, yet Lirazel remains alien and sometimes Alveric’s understanding of her fails. Back in Erl, ten years have passed and Alveric’s father has died. But time passes differently in Elfland actually, it barely passes at all. Alveric overcomes enchanted trees and elvin knights and Lirazel succeed in escaping Elfland. Their lord sends his son Alveric to cross the border of twilight into Elfland, and wed Lirazel, the King of Elfland’s daughter. The parliament of Erl, twelve ordinary men, believing that their land is not sufficiently well regarded within England, tells the Lord of Erl that they want to be ruled by someone magical. The plot concerns the marriage of a mortal and a fairy in some time past in English history. I hope I can persuade you to be one of them. Gollancz has now reissued it – however, it is the same edition as the 1999 one, with a nice cover, so this is definitely for new visitors to Elfland. I first read The King of Elfland’s Daughter five years ago, but this ‘fine, strange, almost forgotten novel’, as Neil Gaiman puts it in his introduction, has not faded in my imagination at all.
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